Congressional Black Caucus: A bastion of seniority

When Democratic Rep. John Conyers — only the second African-American elected to Congress from Michigan — came to Capitol Hill in 1965, he had loads of free time on his hands.

Conyers was appointed to the House Judiciary Committee, the first black lawmaker in the panel’s history. But there wasn’t much for Conyers to do as a junior member of the committee, so, for a while, he hosted a jazz show on a Washington radio station.

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A lot has changed since then.

If the 84-year-old Conyers wins reelection in November to a 26th term — as expected — he will become the dean of the House, the most senior member by length of service, replacing his onetime boss and Democratic icon, retiring Rep. John Dingell of Michigan.

Conyers and other African-American lawmakers, in fact, belong to one of the few remaining bastions of incumbency — the Congressional Black Caucus.

Under current projections, the 114th Congress will include roughly 70 members who have been in the House for 20 years or more. One-fifth of those veteran lawmakers — 14 — will be black Democrats, including the two longest-serving members of the House, Conyers and Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. Rangel was first elected in 1970.

Thanks to that seniority, CBC members could end up as top Democrat on at least seven major committees next year, including Education and the Workforce; Financial Services; Homeland Security; Judiciary; Oversight and Government Reform; Science, Space and Technology; and Veterans’ Affairs.

Another CBC member, Rep. David Scott of Georgia, could be in line for the top Democratic post on the Agriculture Committee, although it appears Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the current ranking member, may run for another term despite being on retirement watch for months, according to a recent news report.

Two Hispanic Democrats — Reps. Linda Sánchez of California and Nydia Velázquez of New York — are the ranking members on the Ethics and Small Business committees, respectively.

Across the aisle, of the 21 House Republicans who chair major committees, all but one is a white male. Michigan Rep. Candice Miller chairs the House Administration Committee.

“Before Barack Obama, if you were elected to Congress, it was like being a king,” said a House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “African-Americans weren’t elected as senator or governor. So you had to be mayor or a [House] member. That was the pinnacle of power.”

The issue is even more critical in recent weeks as a number of high-profile Democrats, including Dingell, Reps. Henry Waxman and George Miller of California, retire, opening up ranking member posts on the Energy and Commerce and Education and the Workforce committees. CBC members are watching these races closely, especially since Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came out for her close friend, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) for the Energy and Commerce spot, despite the fact that she is not the most senior Democrat on the panel.

“I heard that [Pelosi] buried the concept of seniority,” complained Rangel, one of the CBC’s co-founders. “Officially buried it.”

“For CBC members, the power is seniority,” added Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), first elected in 1998. “As committee assignments are doled out, seniority becomes very important. They stayed and played by the rules. They don’t want the rules to change when it’s now their turn to be in [charge], when you have real power and control of what’s going on.”

With Democrats in the minority, the CBC’s power is limited, as it is for all House Democrats. The end of spending earmarks and tight federal budgets also makes it harder to bring home pork for the district.

Yet having so many veteran lawmakers in key posts gives the CBC — which as a group has never been afraid of “transactional politics,” cutting deals to help themselves or their constituents — an opportunity to be heard on nearly every issue.

Why black lawmakers have been able to stay in office is a matter of intense speculation among CBC members themselves. The Republican revolution of 1994, plus the huge GOP wave in 2010, ended the careers of many longtime Democrats, especially in the South. Big Democratic years in 2006 and 2008 meant the same fate for Northeastern Republicans, now an endangered species.